THE NOT-SO-PRIVATE LIFE OF A PUBLIC OFFICIAL

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

For public figures like U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle,
the times they are most likely to want privacy are the
times they are least likely to get it.

Health is understood to be so personal that the
government has laws to keep it that way. It does not
matter, though, when the patient is someone like Castle,
a Republican who has spent 25 years as a lieutenant
governor, governor and congressman.

Here is one instance where the members of Congress
really did pass a law that might as well not apply to
them.

No one knows it better than U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden
Jr., a Democrat who has weathered not one, but two
calamities in his public life -- two brain aneurysms and
a blood clot in his lungs that nearly killed him in 1988
when he was 45, and the car crash at the limits of human
tragedy that took his wife and 13-month-old daughter and
put his two sons in the hospital, only weeks after he
was celebrating his election to the Senate and his 30th
birthday in 1972.

"There really are conflicting emotions. At the
private moments, you have a public obligation. Sometimes
you resent it, but you understand that the public
legitimately owns part of you," Biden said Monday
morning in a telephone interview from Iowa, where he is
testing his presidential appeal for 2008.

What is at stake is not just private well-being but
the public's trust. Both need to be addressed to survive
personally and also politically.

For Castle, 67, of Wilmington, there was only sketchy
information in the immediate shock and scare from his
small stroke, which struck him Saturday morning while he
was with his wife Jane at their beach house in Dewey
Beach and caused him to be airlifted to Christiana
Hospital in Stanton.

By Sunday evening, however, Castle's office was
making his doctors available at a press conference and
offering first-hand stories about his hospitalization
and recovery. Both private and public crises seemed
largely to be over.

"Your obligation to the public is to try to get as
much information out as soon as possible, but the
reality is, you may not know what the medical situation
is, and you may be dealing with family members and staff
members who are mainly concerned about your boss, and
you're concerned about your boss," said Gregory B.
Patterson, the former communications director for Gov.
Ruth Ann Minner, a Democrat who has had a knee
replacement, kidney stones and bronchitis while in
office.

Castle remained in the hospital on Monday, a public
event canceled at which he planned to push for federal
legislation supporting research into child digestive
illnesses, but continuing to improve.

"Rep. Castle is making excellent progress, joking
around, engaging his staff about legislation on the
House floor, and being checked out by his doctors, who
report that he is doing extremely well. His main
treatment regimen is aspirin and sleep. The doctors are
hoping he will be able to be discharged in the next few
days," Elizabeth B. Wenk, the congressman's deputy chief
of staff, said in a statement issued late Monday
afternoon.

In a state that knows its congressional delegation as
Joe and Mike and Tom, Biden believes it is easier to
override any circle-the-wagons instinct than it is, say,
with the national press.

"The truth is, you pretty well overcome it because
this is such an embracing community. People don't try to
cross the line. There is respect. The national press not
only wants to know, is he going to live or die, but what
was your wife's first thought, what did your son say,"
Biden said.

There is a well-known cautionary tale in Delaware
politics, nearly four decades old, about how not to
handle a medical emergency involving a prominent
officeholder.

Gov. Charles L. Terry Jr., a 68-year-old Democrat,
was running for re-election in 1968 when he had a mild
heart attack, his second, following one in 1959. His
office stalled on explaining why he was hospitalized and
was vague about the length of his recovery.

Terry had other problems, most notably his decision
to keep the National Guard in Wilmington long after the
riots following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. were
over, and he lost the election narrowly. A newspaper
editorial suggested that the dearth of news about his
health also created political damage.

"The people got [dribs] and drabs of sometimes
questionable information on a legitimate issue of the
election year," it read. "It now can be said without
fear of influencing the election that the public was
subjected to nearly everything but candor."

From Biden's perspective, there are no such worries
for Castle, who is running for an eighth term against
Democrat Dennis Spivack and two minor-party candidates.

"It sounds like he's going to be OK. I think the
public is going to be prepared. He's telling the truth.
He's got good doctors. I don't see it having an impact
on his race," Biden said.

Bad health is not as detrimental to candidates as bad
information is. Castle has been winning elections for a
long time. This one will have less to do with his
opposition than with showing his fitness for office is
unimpaired -- and having the voters believe it, too.